Now, the oil and gas industry has set its sights on our national forests, wildlife refuges and even lands within view of national parks.

President Obama promised to protect us from the ravages of fracking, but instead of safeguarding our natural heritage and its supplies of clean drinking water, his administration is preparing to step aside and let fracking run roughshod over them.

NRDC is launching an all-out campaign to stop the fracking juggernaut from invading our last wild places, threatening our drinking water supplies and devastating more communities across the country. You can do your part to help by making your voice heard in defense of our public lands.

Here’s what’s at stake: wild places from Virginia to California, clean drinking water for millions of Americans, and backyards across the country where the government controls the oil and gas rights beneath private property.

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM), charged with safeguarding our public lands from the worst abuses of fracking, has just proposed a shocking set of rules that reads like an industry wish list.

Those rules would not stop energy companies from fracking next to national parks, inside national forests, and across millions more acres of treasured lands. Nor would they stop the frackers from drilling alongside drinking water supplies on public lands.

Here are just a few of the places where the BLM is essentially preparing to hang out a sign that says “Open for Drilling”: Virginia’s George Washington National Forest, Ohio’s Wayne National Forest, Colorado’s White River National Forest, California’s Los Padres National Forest, and lands outside Glacier and Grand Teton National Parks.

Plus, the BLM controls the drilling rights to some 57 million acres of private property — a vast area as big as Georgia.

So for many Americans, BLM has the power to green light fracking operations literally in their own backyards. Do you think an agency that has cozied up to the oil and gas lobby should decide the fate of vulnerable citizens from coast to coast?

With one stroke of his pen, President Obama can safeguard our natural heritage, protect our drinking water and shield communities from California to Virginia that sit near public oil and gas reserves.

It’s up to us to hold him to his word and protect the American people from an oil and gas industry that is running amok.

But that’s not all. If we want to stave off catastrophic climate change, we must also call on the President to move America beyond all fossil fuels as rapidly as possible, toward a future powered by 100 percent clean energy.

If one has never driven across the US they should, if for no other reason but to see the vast spaces ALREADY despoiled by the BLM / under it's control. Not as far as the eye can see but, literally, as far as one can drive- for hours.
This is public land, a good portion of which is closed to the public but leased to private companies so they can strip mine, drill, and poison with toxic waste. All for the insulting amount of $1 a year.
Not only that, but your tax dollars then pay for their employees to drive around in $50k trucks provided to 'monitor' the areas from those who would do damage. (Those damn protestors)
If the American people were well-informed and could stop fighting with each other, band together and go after the REAL problems, we wouldn't have all the social injustice, economic inequality and overt unfairness that is prevalent in today's world.
The bastards make me sick.

No, no a million times NO to fracking in our national parks and wildlife refuges! I am willing to physically go wherever necessary to stop this, should it - God forbid - happen. This fracking
frenzy has got to be the most short-sighted, greediest, quickly railroaded thing to ever be forced upon our land. I hate the fact that our representatives (and I use the term loosely) aren't fighting tooth and nail against this.

If I am still here in a few years, when everything of real worth to me has all but gone, I will be so unbearably sad that I don't think I will want to live any longer. If I cannot walk in the woods and breathe in fresh, clean air; if I cannot hear running water from springs and streams or hear the birds calling across the treetops; if I cannot feel that everything is in its right and natural place, what will be the point of it all? These are the things that are truly priceless and yet some people seem hell bent on putting their greed and personal gain ahead of them. Why can't the people in power see that having all the money and power in the world is going to mean absolutely nothing in the face of the Earth's inevitable march towards extinction? WHY? WHY? WHY? I absolutely despair...and this fracking fiasco is going to be repeated all over the world, destroying our natural heritage forever. Turning the clock back won't be an option. It will all be way too late and I will derive no pleasure from joining you all in saying "told you so" to these moronic, short-sighted harbingers of our collective doom. So unbearably sad.

Petition signed. The big corporations have been trying to get into the Grand Canyon for years. There is a mortorium on them for a couple of years, signed by Obama. If the Republicans have their way, they will let big business do whatever they wanted as they did during the Bush's administration. We have to keep the Republicans out of office. They are fighting for big corporations and not the middle class people, wildlife or environment.

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